puffin: [14] Puffin probably goes back to one of the ancestral Celtic languages of the British Isles – perhaps Cornish. Its English guise is no doubt due to its plump appearance, which suggested associations with puff [13] (a word which originated as an imitation of the sound of puffing).
North Atlantic seabird, mid-14c., perhaps connected with puff on notion of appearance, or from some Celtic word (earliest association is with Cornwall and Scilly), and altered by influence of puff.
